The five of us had breakfast the next
morning, and then I was on my way to Virginia Beach for the semi-annual
IAGLCWDC convention (hosted by The
Othersiders Country & Western Dance Club), via Richmond.
I produce the DANCE! travel guide for gay and lesbian country-western dancing, publishing it twice a year, once for each IAGLCWDC annual or semi-annual convention. But given that I was already lugging around four pieces of luggage — one suitcase just for my Hallowe’en costume and footwear! — I had no desire to tote a fifth box across the country. So, thanks to Kinko’s, I was able to send a PDF file of the travel guide to a Richmond location, and then could just add it to the trunk of the car along the way. It’s never quite that easy, though.
Prior to leaving for the trip, I had printed out a bunch of Yahoo! maps for my various destinations, or for approximations of my destinations. I found out, though, that sometimes those maps can be misleading, and my trip to Richmond was one of them. I was looking for an exit for a particular highway (which I later found was a turnpike), but after going all the way through Richmond, I knew I had missed it. Stopping to buy a map, and found my way back to the Kinko’s — lost 30 minutes travel time, probably — and I suspect the exit I was looking for was simply not numbered with the road number the Yahoo! map indicated. (I would encounter this again in Atlanta, where the Yahoo! driving directions took me to the capitol building rather than the bed and breakfast I was staying at, and yet a third time in St. Petersburg, where the directions said “Merge onto state road such-and-such,” but the only signs were for 22nd Avenue, so I had to do some driving by guesswork.)
Anyway, I picked up the travel guide without further incident — it came out just fine — and went on to Virginia Beach. After checking in (and getting a heavy cruise from one of the boys from Minneapolis), I ran into Jack from Austin, and he and I headed out to The Happy Clam to join the crew from Boston’s Gays for Patsy. After dinner, it was back to the hotel (the Sheraton on the boardwalk, although the boardwalk was all torn up to be repaired; one of the risks when you are at some place in the off season — I never managed to even get down to the beach the entire weekend!) for a change of clothes, and then to the Rainbow Cactus Company, the local gay country bar for dancing and carousing. (And for the first of many rounds of the line dance “All Shook Up”. Originally taught to IAGLCWDCers at Southern Country Chattanooga’s hoedown in November 1997, it has quickly become almost an official dance for the association, it seems.)
And then back to the hotel — giving a ride to five people from Southern Country Charlotte’s Queen City Outlaws and one from Atlanta in the process — for a short stop in the Hospitality Suite (only until 3:00 am, as I had to be up early the next morning! Those boys (and girls) from Virginia sure do party, though!).